A Spam Christmas

by Erik Kennedy

Take tinsel supplements to feel thirty again. To feel three again. To feel the age you werewhen you last got a present you loved.

Start with a solid roof over your head with tinsel shingles. Fill the garden with tinsel fertiliser.Fuck like a tinsel snowman this season.

Reverse-mortgage the house with the tinsel-filled garden.

Take a trip to Africa this Christmas and shoot a stripey reindeer. These storage devices willhold your special memories.

A tactical flashlight is the perfect gift for someone dim, for someone who might want to berun over by a dump truck and survive, or be frozen in a block of ice and still illuminate aburglar.

Not everyone who breaks into your house this December will be Santa Claus. That’s whythere are carbon-fibre crossbows. Hang on, not crossbows—CrossFit-affiliated gyms.

Dear patriots, shed those holiday pounds fast by enlisting in the army today. I don’tremember how that Christmas cracker joke went, but the answer is: ‘An army marches onits stomach.’

Improve your golf swing, golf swingers, golf swingles, golf swingle bells, please keepimproving, especially at this time of year when those in need feel want most keenly.

Learn new languages fast. ‘Tinsel’ in Japanese is tinseru. ‘Tinsel’ in Portuguese is ouropel.‘Tinsel’ in German is lametta. ‘Tinsel’ in Georgian is polga.

Put the X-ACTO knife back in Xmas.

Put the X-Men back in Xmas.

Put the Jaguar XJ back in Xmas.

Put the X-ray technicians’ jobs back in Xmas.

There is a war on, a goddamned war on Christmas, so you’d better get your food delivered bydrone.

Turduckens just like mum used to make before she got those implants, that’s what we want.More breast meat than ever before and cooks in under an hour.

You don’t have to be told how valuable your time is, and that includes your time on earth.Get more coverage for less money by only singing religious carols, which are frankincenseto secular carols’ frankfurters.

Fool the police with this one easy trick: eat eighty liquor-filled chocolates while crying on thecarpet and frighten everyone away by showing them your smeary, furry tongue.

In bleak mindwinter, inspiration goes.

You want a Christmas cracker joke? What’s red and white and green with envy? A candycane when it hears how I made $2,611 working from home today.

Erik Kennedy’s poems have appeared in (or are forthcoming in) places like Ladowich, Powder Keg Magazine, and Prelude in the US, 3:AM Magazine, The Literateur, and Poems in Which in the UK, and Landfall and Sport in New Zealand. He is the poetry editor for Queen Mob’s Teahouse. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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